Yesterday Michael Gove asked Ofsted to ditch the much loved SEF (Self Evaluation Form). The full article and statement with the relevant letter is here

I discussed this in a staff meeting last night with one of the Leicestershire primary schools we work with. After the delighted head left the room, one of the teachers raised an interesting point. She almost copied this sentence from the article We believe that teachers – not bureaucrats and politicians – should run schools without seeing it.

‘And you know what that means don’t you? It means that we’ll see big drops in money coming into schools. The heads will then have to reduce staff and the politicians will be able to say it’s all the heads’ fault. Nothing to do with us. The Daily Mail will love it!’

I’ve deliberately tagged this blog post with words which the social media teams in the big house should find. Let’s see if they’re any good at finding stuff and secondly if they have a response to that comment. I suspect the space below will stay quite empty.

What do you think of that teacher’s comments?

And – by the way – has anyone else noticed that the revamped Department for Education website STILL does not have an obvious search feature?

The purpose of the Bill is to:
Give full effect to the range of programmes envisaged in the Coalition agreement.

The main benefits of the Bill will be:
•To give all schools greater freedom over the curriculum
•To improve school accountability
•To take action to tackle bureaucracy
•To improve behaviour in schools
The main elements of the Bill are:
•To provide schools with the freedoms to deliver an excellent education in the way they see fit.
•To reform Ofsted and other accountability frameworks to ensure that head teachers are held properly accountable for the core educational goals of attainment and closing the gap between rich and poor.
•To introduce a slimmer curriculum giving more space for teachers to decide how to teach.
•To introduce a reading test for 6 year olds to make sure that young children are learning and to identify problems early.
•To give teachers and head teachers the powers to improve behaviour and tackle bullying.
•We expect standards across the education sector to rise through the creation of more Academies and giving more freedom to head teachers and teachers. We will also ensure that money follows pupils, and introduce a ‘pupil premium’ so that more money follows the poorest pupils.

Existing legislation in this area:
•The structure and functions of Ofsted are set out in the Education and Inspections Act 2006. The duty to inspect and report on schools is set out in section 5 of the Education Act 2005.
•The law relating to the National Curriculum, the key stages and testing is set out in Part 6 of the Education Act 2002 and related secondary legislation.
•Much of the law relating to pupil behaviour is set out in Part 7 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 and related secondary legislation. The requirement to set up Independent Appeal Panels is in section 52 of the Education Act 2002. There are provisions about home-school agreements in the School Standards and Framework Act 1998.
•Academies are currently governed by contracts entered into under section 482 of the Education Act 1996 as amended.